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Obamacare for old folks: Just 'cut your life short'

Health plan provision demands 'end-of-life' counseling

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.

The version of President Obama’s universal health care plan pending in the U.S. House would require “end-of-life” counseling for senior citizens, and the former lieutenant governor for the state of New York is warning people to “protect their parents” from the measure.

At issue is section 1233 of the legislative proposal that deals with a government requirement for an “Advance Care Planning Consultation.”

Betsy McCaughey, the former New York state officer, told former president candidate Fred Thompson during an interview on his radio program the “consultation” is no more or less than an attempt to convince seniors to die.

“One of the most shocking things is page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory absolutely that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session,” she said. “They will tell [them] how to end their life sooner.”

The proposal specifically calls for the consultation to recommend “palliative care and hospice” for seniors in their mandatory counseling sessions. Palliative care and hospice generally focus only on pain relief until death.

The measure requires “an explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under this title.”

Excerpt from health care plan

It also recommends a method for death: “the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”

Another excerpt from the Obamacare plan

Then there’s a third reference that sets out reporting requirements for doctors to monitor how such end-of-life orders are followed.

Under “QUALITY REPORTING INITIATIVE,” the bill says, “For purposes of reporting data on quality measures for covered professional services furnished during 2011 and any subsequent year, to the extent that measures are available, the Secretary shall include quality measures on end of life care and advanced care planning that have been adopted or endorsed by a consensus-based organization, if appropriate. Such measures shall measure both the creation of and adherence to orders for life-sustaining treatment.”

A third excerpt from Obamacare

McCaughey said she was stunned.

“As a patient advocate I am so shocked at the vicious assault on elderly people and the boomer generation,” she told Thompson. “I hope people listening will protect their parents from what is intended under this bill.”

She cited the federal provision that such counseling sessions must be administered every five years. If there’s a significant change in the person’s health or status during that time, such as an ordinary move to a nursing home because of declining physical abilities, the counseling must be administered again.

The message, she said, is “to do what’s in society’s best interests, and cut your life short.”

“Can you imagine the response of the American people (when they find out)?” Thompson asked..

The law also allows preferences that treatment levels set up by patients “may range from an indication for full treatment to an indication to limit some or all … interventions.”

McCaughey also said the Obama administration is suggesting that medical care be withheld from seniors based on the expected years they have left to live. Such a program already is in effect in the United Kingdom, where patients losing their eyesight to age-related macular degeneration cannot be given an eyesight-saving medication until they lose sight in one eye.